Hiring or Collaborating on Unity Project using paid assets

I am currently working on a personal project using Unity by myself.

I am using various paid assets from the Asset Store (Including Code, Art, etc, etc).

If I wanted to hire or collaborate with someone to assist with this project, what would my options be? I obviously cannot put the code on github or a similar site and work with people there, since this would violate licensing agreements with both Unity and the owners of the paid assets, so what can I do?

Could I hire a developer and make them sign an NDA, then give them access to my codebase? What would happen if they violated the NDA and used a paid asset from my project themselves?
Or would I need to pay for an additional copy of all of the assets for each person that I have working on my project?

I would appreciate any advice, the finer points of copyright and licencing regulations are not my strong suit.

 

Oh, no worries, you'll be fine. -- random guy on the internet.


My point is, consult a lawyer to review the case by case terms set by each of the asset owners.

 

Asset creators don't determine the license on a case-by-case basis, it's store-wide: https://unity3d.com/legal/as_terms

--Eric

 

Thanks for the correction. I inadvertently prove my own point.

Get a lawyer.

 

For most assets you only need one copy per site. That means everyone who works in the same office building can use the same copy. Remote workers need their own copy. Contracted third parties need their own copy.

For editor extensions you need one copy per seat. That means everyone.

The license is pretty straight forward. There isn't really a need for a lawyer here. Getting a lawyer for straight forward requirements is a quick way to go broke.

You don't go consult a neurosurgeon every time you have a headache.

 

Is it not possible to take stuff like this to a legal consultant, have them look it over, and translate into plain english?

Actually, i just read the clause. It's pretty darn straightforward. Anyway, let me revise and just say that if you aren't sure, get qualified help.

 

I err on the side of caution: my clients send me a package file of an asset I have already purchased (my asset store collection is a bit ridiculous at this point). I'm no lawyer and I have no interest in keeping up with any subtle changes made to the licensing. I would never recommend a client use an asset that I wouldn't use myself, so a lot of times I already own them, but if not I grab a copy real quick and show a dev some support.

Likely overkill but it is a very small inconvenience and everyone can rest a bit easier and someone makes a sale or two. There are packages that require a license per seat so you'll want to keep an eye on that; again, something I don't have to worry about with my method. I also avoid using free assets in any release because licensing can get a bit wonky there, too.

Edit: I should probably clarify that I am the one being hired, not the one doing the hiring.

 

Excellent answers, thank you!

From what I'm hearing, and from what Eric posted, I'm understanding that to collaborate with someone online , and share my project with them, they would need their own licence to all assets that I am using?

That clears that up, thank you.

How would I verify that they actually had all of these assets? Would the responsibility be on me to make sure, or is there some way that I can easily verify which assets a user has legal access to?

EDIT:

Another thing that I was wondering is could I purchase multiple copies of assets myself, and then allocate virtual team members a "seat" to work on my project using these additional copies that I have bought?
So essentially I am buying 4-5 copies of the assets, and maintaining ownership of them, but granting temporary access to team members working on my project? If a team member leaves, I can then revoke their access to the assets, and give it to someone else?

Is there any kind of team-licence option like this?

 

AFAIK there is no way to do this and as per the license you are not allowed to transfer any licenses of assets.

The working way is to state in your contract that your project is using the following 3rd-party assets and the contributor as per the contract needs to have these assets (you may or may not compensate them for this, it's up to you and your contractor). (I'm not a lawyer so please, be careful and if possible seek professional help to write your contract)
If your contract states this, it will be the contractor's responsibility to have the given 3-party assets to be able to work on your project.

 

Right, that's unfortunate, but I guess if it's the only way I would have to work with it.

I came across a few options for working with teams within unity, like this for example:
https://unity3d.com/teams?utm_source=unity3d&utm_medium=hero

But I'm guessing they only apply for teams working at the same physical location?

 

I haven't (re)read the license to double-check this, but since the store offers (offered?) a "buy additional license" function it would seem a bit silly if you couldn't use that to supply licenses for your collaborators. At the very least, if that's intended only for "One License Per Seat" assets and on-site workers, that should be made really clear* somewhere in the purchase process.

That said, my process at my old job when working for clients was to create a new Unity account, purchase any licenses required for our client using that account, and then handing that whole account over when they paid us. That way we made sure that we knew they had licenses before we handed them any source.

* Waits for someone to post a screenshot of something really obvious I missed...

 

That is only true for the editor extensions, which falls under the 'one license per seat' rule.

The ordinary assets does not ask you to buy another license:



(This of course does not mean that I'm inherently right, BTW)

 

(Just drag'n'drop images here, please try not to link to image sites since the image links don't work, they have a tendency to vanish over time, and they're much slower.)

--Eric

 

Sorry, the popup-editor does not say at all that you can do it (you can't). The image insertion only accept URL.

 

Click the upload a file button at the bottom of the post. The image button isn't great.

Its also considered a courtesy to put pics in spoiler tags for those of us with slow internet connections.

 

I know, since he told me to upload I have looked for the option so I found it.

 

Just dragging an image also works, on some browsers.

 

Way faster/easier than any other method.

--Eric

 

Has the problem where attached images don't successfully show up in posts for up to several hours been resolved?

 

That's a problem? I haven't heard of or encountered that before, but then I also never really experienced the slow forums that people were complaining about, so since they apparently fixed that, perhaps non-showing attachments is fixed too.

--Eric